When Charles drops a new video, you stop and take a look because his tricks are always worth it.
Return top used is the A-RT Grail. Ending is NSFW for language.
Riccardo Fraolini – Utopia
CLYW’s Riccardo Fraolini visited Poland to give the folks at the Backspin a slew of high-fives and awesome tricks…the high-fives they kept, but they filmed the tricks and shared them with everyone!
Riccardo, king of the #trickcircle, is in top form here…enjoy!
Yoyo used is the Arctic Circle: 2nd Expedition by CLYW.
Ed Haponik – #trickcircle IV: The Quest For Peace
Once upon a time, all yoyos were fixed axle. Therefore, all yoyo tricks were fixed axle yoyo tricks. That’s just how it was. Then some dude in Sweden threw a ball-bearing into a yoyo, and some dude in San Francisco threw a ball-bearing into a good yoyo, and then all hell broke loose.
Now we’ve come to the point where fixed axle yoyo play is a rarity, not the norm. Modern tricks don’t work well on fixed axles. But a handful of people have decided that there just need to be more modern tricks that do work on fixed axle yoyos, and thus we have Ed Haponik.
For a while, the vogue was to try and hit really hard modern tricks on fixed axle yoyos just to prove you could. It was vain and ridiculous and fun, but all it proved was that fixed axles were largely obsolete equipment. What players like Ed Haponik and Drew Tetz and a few others have done is embraced the limitations of fixed axle yoyos and simply created modern tricks that are intended for them, instead of done in spite of them.
The modern fixed axle renaissance is fantastic, and watching players like Ed find ways to make fixed axle play not only difficult but native is truly exciting.
Watch this video and enjoy. And then go get one of these or one of these and get to work.
#trickcircle Roundup 5/17/14
Greetings, gentle readers, and welcome to another installment of #trickcircle! We’re scouring Instagram for 15-second bursts of yoyoing and posting our favorites here. Check out the videos, follow the players, get inspired, and go out and throw. (Don’t forget to tag your own clips with #trickcircle and join the fun!)
To many people, JonRob is the @5AGOAT; he is widely remembered for bringing tech 5A to the masses through his battles with Jake Bullock, but wants to remind people that he’s been “going big since day one.” This wrap & tangler combo definitely backs up that statement, and the continuous motion is a great contrast to his more laidback counterweight tech. JonRob & Tyler Severance were some of the very first people to integrate wraps & tanglers into competition 5A, so if you’ve ever wanted to learn some of those, you could definitely start by picking apart this sequence.
Riccardo Fraolini (@blablanchard) has been featured on #trickcircle before, but how could we not run this insane suicide sequence? No wonder CLYW wanted to pick him up. Riccardo could easily be called the king of the instaclip: seems like every week he’s got another one of these jawdropping tricks. Riccardo’s banger elements are definitely what grabs your attention, but there is also a huge amount of care in crafting the way that these moves flow so seamlessly into each other, and he deserves credit for finding the optimal links between simple moves. And that final suicide! What?!
Serezhk Basygin (@serezhkabasygin, via @aeroyorussia) may not be a household name yet, but with tricks like this it seems like it must only be a matter of time. As is coming to be the standard for Russian 1A, this combo is almost entirely dense, technical maneuvers, including a number of clever slack GT setups, but what really caught my attention is the steady sense of pacing. Pauses are often seen as flaws for breaking up the flow, forcing players to become faster & faster, but this trick is a great example of how slowing down can really boost a trick’s impact. He uses pauses to draw attention to the mounts & elements and let them sink in before mutating them again, and the breakdown to GT halfway through the trick is a beautiful example of tension & release.
In the spirit of 5A May, Junpei Shimizu (@junpei_5a) shows three counterweight entrances to a popular variation on the reverse bind. This is a great use of the Instagram format, using the relatively small amount of time to showcase a few different moves that fit together well, and bonus points to him for hitting them all in the same take. These elements might look simple taken on their own, but they are all well-constructed combo finishers and well-worth adding to your repertoire.
Did you learn that bind in the last trick? Here’s Maxim Gruzintsev (@decaika) using a similar bind in the middle of a 1A trick to catch the yo-yo and switch into a horizontal combo. Players have been chasing plane-changing regens for a while now, but with the increased sophistication of horizontal play and the recent trend of using stalls & catches mid-combo the field is starting to get really interesting. This is definitely one of the more seamless entrances yet, and the implications for a contest situation are enormous: why waste time between tricks catching & throwing into a horizontal combo when you can just switch in the middle? He has a stop-n-go entrance that ain’t bad neither... oh, and he got attacked by a cat on camera. You gotta see that. Cat attack!
Bonus tricks:
Kenji Nakatsuka’s beautiful double rejection
Even Malcolm Chiu’s “silly tricks” are brilliant: an engineer’s windup to GT suicide (?!)
Mark Mangarin’s Boy Scout Laceration
Tomiya Maryoji’s very clever pinky catch whip
Joe Black’s “Maider x Yamaki bind”, horizontal madness
Tsukasa Takatsu’s “Octopus Two”, a great tribute to Justin Weber
#trickcircle Round Up 5/5/14: 5A May Edition
Hey gang! Gather ’round the internet machine and join us for the best yo-yoing you can fit into 15 seconds, #trickcircle. In this series (previous installments here) we scan Instagram for videos tagged with #trickcircle, pick recent favorites, and collect them here along with some thoughts on what makes them great. In the spirit of 5A May, let’s keep this installment to counterweight tricks.
It only seems right to start things off with the man who first decided that yo-yos worked better tied to dice than to fingers, @unklesteve (aka National Yoyo Master Steve Brown.) Steve laid a huge amount of the bedrock for 5A; there’s a pretty good chance that he made up half of the tricks you can do back in ’98 with Neff. The crazy thing is that Steve is still shredding: there ain’t nothing outdated about that combo up there, and few people can manage those kinds of finger switches with the ease that he does. I recognize the launch from one of my favorite tricks in Steve’s 365yoyotricks project, “Circuitous”, great to see two equally gnarly paths branching out from the beginning of the combo.
Let’s take a trip down south to visit @bryanjardin, AKA 2 time Asian Pacific Champ & 4 time Philippine Champ Bryan Jardin. Bryan’s style is fun, exciting, and hard to keep up with—kind of like Bryan himself. Where Steve’s combo was based around clockwork motions within a few mounts between his hands, Bryan’s is all about momentum. He keeps the mount simple, but the confidence behind his tricks comes out in power & speed that make for a very exciting show. Entering red propellor from around the arm at the end of the combo was a particularly nice touch.
Taking us back to technical territory is @scottsm7 (2011 US Champ Samm Scott.) Samm has been exploring this style of combo more frequently in his recent freestyles: dense tricks that rack up by points by mounting, pinwheeling, and redirecting the counterweight & yo-yo around the hands while maintaining control of a central string structure. You can definitely see traces of influence from Jon Rob & Jake Bullock, but more than anything what shines through is top-level string control placing every element exactly where he needs it to be.
Let’s take a break from the long combos and get to something more instantly satisfying: bangers! @danielbudai (AKA Daniel Budai, 2 time Hungarian Champ & 2012 European 5A Champ) brings us this mighty green triangle. The beauty in this trick is that the elements all logically flow together, but the end result is still surprising: the motion of the counterweight out of e-fan naturally unmounts the yo-yo and continues into the crook of his arm, and the momentum of the yo-yo naturally sets up a GT formation to land in. The other best part of this trick is definitely that it lets you flex like a strong man at the end, so if you learn it make sure to pose in the mirror a bit.
@chasebaxter is an American player who has been steadily moving up the ranks in contests and is beginning to make waves with combos like this one. Chase’s style features a good mix of ’07-10 American contest 5A influences and his own “swangle,” perhaps best exemplified with the 1-2-3-4 counterweight mount buildup at the beginning of the combo and the drop suicide at the end. Definitely a name to watch.
At the beginning of the month, Takeshi Kamisato challenged @edhaponik to come up with some Fixed Axle 5A. Ed is certainly no stranger to Fixed Axle, but fixie 5A has gone largely unexamined due to the fact that traditional counterweight tricks are reeeally hard without bearings. Ed sidesteps this technical challenge and uses a responsive setup (a butterfly!) to his advantage with this sidewinder freegen, a visually appealing exercise in quick reflexes & lateral thinking. This trick contains some of the best parts of modern fixed axle play: it may seem like a “dead end” due to its lack of string hits and inability to combo in/out of anything, but it’s not easy to find a single move with a visual effect as strong as this one. Furthermore, even players who understand why a sidewinder flutters can enjoy banging the hell out of their knuckles trying this trick at home—trust me, it’s harder than it looks. And isn’t that the heart of all yo-yo tricks?
#trickcircle Roundup – 4/14/14
Here’s a quick little burst of goodness you might have missed on Instagram! Remember to post your videos with the hashtag #trickcircle so we can find them!
Kenji Nakatsuka just broke my brain with this amazing combo he shot of Ryota Torigoe.
JonRob reminding everyone why he’s the GOAT. Check out that moment where the counterweight lays over his forearm and he slides it down to his wrist…that is ^&*$%&^ golden.
Big, flowy slack moves and string rejections never get old. Thanks to Igor Galiev for bringing us this one from Victor Gravitsky.
…and as usual, Riccardo Fraolini wins everything. Damn, dude.
#trickcircle round up 12/22/2013
The #trickcircle tag on Instagram has become the spot for players to share their latest moves, and we here at @Yoyonews are picking out the best ones to share every week. We’re still about two weeks behind, so we’ve got a huge crop of amazing material to sort through and it might take more than one installment before we’re caught up, but enough talk: let’s get to the tricks!
OK, I know we talked last week about @blablablanchard (Riccardo Fraolini) and that I’m jumping ahead a bit in our queue of tricks, but this was too good not to share. It opens with a fairly understated slack sequence before dropping into an unusual-looking chopsticks mount… and then string starts spitting out the top of the yo-yo into his hand like some kind of weird magic spell. Jaws stay dropped as he moves his hand to charm the string back and forth a few times, accentuating it with a humorous head turn, before propelling it all the way to the other finger and properly finish his mount. Colin Leland (of TMBR Toys) notably made a video in 2007 called “The Magnum Project” exploring this response-centric trick, but few players have been able to crack the concept open as effectively as Riccardo has here. Love it!
@smietanejro (AKA Piotrek Smietana of YoYoJam Poland, Backspin, and organizer of the recent WFC International) compresses a ton of conceptual goodness into a short amount of time with this great 3D bind. It sets up with an undermount tossed into a grind, which is then thrown upwards and outwards which triggers a sidewinder effect on the return. Not only is this creative, flashy, and good for fixing string tension, but in a contest setting it automatically tacks 4 or 5 extra clicks on to the end of your combo. As contest tricks become increasingly dense, it pays to put a little bit of flair into your catches. For a bonus instaclip, check out his “Puff Puff” trick — picture trick tech ahoy!
@daigowerrd (AKA Daigo Komiya of Werrd Japan) brings us this beautiful counterweight combo. Contest judge Boxthor once told me that a hallmark of Japanese combo construction is variations on a theme, and you can definitely see this idea reflected in the redirection sequence at the end of this trick. Daigo’s style, though, crosses all kinds of borders, and he’s known for creative details that make all his tricks feel both cohesive and surprising. The final bind/unwrap sequence is a particular favorite of mine Bonus: check out his bouncy chopsticks 1A repeater.
@johnwrobot (AKA John Bot of CLYW) is the yo-yo player equivalent of a cult classic. While he may not be as well-known as players like Hank or Tyler, they (and many others) will cite him as one of the best dudes to yo-yo with ever, something which is plain to see in the Team Chubby Lovin’ and Tricks Old & New series. Part of his charm is that his tricks are almost narrative-driven: true, they’re fun to watch on video, but the best way to experience them is to watch it performed with accompanying sound effects and a silly story behind the name. This particular trick, Double-on Tondra, is an elaborate double entendre (!) following the creation of a 1.5 zipper he titled the “tondra” while eating burgers in Adam & Seth’s apartment the night before Dave’s wedding. Maybe you had to be there, but the trick is fun no matter what.
@darnell_hairston, the prince of Cleveland, breaks out some unconventional mounts in this trick that blurs the lines between frontstyle and sidestyle tricks. While his body is definitely turned and his motions are informed as though he’s performing a frontstyle trick, the fact that the yo-yo motion occurs outside of his throwhand means that his fingers are pointing the same direction and it could be directly translated into a cross-handed sidestyle trick. It breathes a lot of new life into an otherwise straightforward maneuver.
@yoyopeople (AKA John Higby) proves once again that he is truly a magic man with Magic Sleeper, a befuddling conversion from offstring to 1A. How does he do it? He’s already confirmed that it’s not washing machine… and, frankly, the mystery is part of the fun! Creating a trick that entertains non-yoyoers & hardcore players alike is no easy feat, and John’s sense of fun & endless creativity makes him one of the most watchable yo-yo performers of all time.
CJ Atkinson’s awesome foldy tech trick
Chris Cancino’s… cats. What? Everybody loves cuteness. Bonus cat in Sonny’s videos, too.
Shane Lubecker’s cheery christmas slack attack
David Ung’s great GT combo with an Elephark-inspired ending
Stacks on stacks of slacks from Hulio Baklanos with this clever Reverse fake GT trick
12/14/13 #trickcircle Roundup
The #trickcircle tag on Instagram has become the spot for players to share their latest moves, and we here at @Yoyonews are picking out the best ones to share every week. It’s been a little while since our last installment, so we’ve got a huge crop of amazing material to sort through and it might take more than one installment before we’re caught up, but enough talk: let’s get to the tricks!
@blablablanchard (AKA Riccardo Fraolini) gives us a lot to look at with this insta-monster; this could be taught as a master class in slack composition. From the very opening mount (a pop to trapeze-brother with a hanging slack set up) he proves that this combo is going to be a doozy, and the hits just keep on coming, plowing through two more whips before a visually pleasing slack pinch that resets the mount and a grind that pops him into the final triangle… and an appropriate celebration, of course. Riccardo’s known for his smart and innovative tricks that manage to make you laugh and hit rewind to start learning immediately; for a longer look, you’ll definitely want to check out the R-Special vids on his Youtube channel.
@nehemiahpeterson keeps it short and sweet with this clever whip sequence: it opens with a jade whip, followed by a direction change which sends the slack loop wrapping around your hand an extra time before catching the yo-yo as you mount in a trapeze. It’s a simple variation on some classic whip tricks, and is easy enough to understand once you’ve learned the basic mach-5 whip, but that’s a big part of why it’s so effective. I just wish we could see how he ends it! For those who want some more substance, Nehemiah also submitted this impressive arm trick.
@grantgtj (AKA Grant Johnson, brought to us here by @clywlevi) made waves this year with his hugely innovative Worlds 2A freestyle, and this clip proves once again that he is a 1A force to be reckoned with. Grant’s genius comes from the way that he takes well-known mounts and pushes them in directions we’ve never seen before with style to spare. Never before has a split-bottom to GT looked so good: Grant moves the yo-yo into a gunslinger and then immediately pushes it offplane, which rejects the string and sets his hands up to catch the triangle perfectly. Want more Grant one-handed madness? Check out his PNWR Freestyle.
@mayi____ is still a fairly unknown name, but this combo is more than enough reason to start watching out for him. Seriously, how do you think of this? This sequence thoroughly explores the throwhand thumb mount as a landing pad for all kinds of around-the-arm maneuvers, and both the difficulty and the presentation are ratcheted up considerably due to the fact that he pinches the string and lets the slack hang out. Good variation and expressive body movement also bring this trick to the foreground, and the result is a fully-realized concept leaving us excited for more. As a bonus, check out this bizarre (but totally brilliant) pocketwatch concept from the same set.
@snapsta (AKA Ivan Maslin) leaves us seriously wondering if there’s something in the Russian water that produces such incredible tech players. He blew our minds a year ago with his Innovation Movement part and has steadily been developing into quite the force on the tech scene. While this trick sticks to more or less a single mount for the theme, it packs in an impressive amount of movement and maintains a great sense of tempo throughout. Check out his Werrd Wrecking Crew vid for more goodness.
@zbyszekpanda (AKA Zbyszek Kubiński) shows a great way to mix up inverted and normal trapeze hits while keeping a good head of steam—he definitely does not waste any time racking up the points. One of my favorite parts of this trick would be that his hands retain similar placement throughout, but the combo doesn’t seem to get stale. Part of this is undoubtedly the way that he mixes up hits inside and outside of his wrists towards the end of his combo, and the amount of variations he finds is truly impressive.
Bonus tricks:
Tyler Severance’s zippy new 1A which begs you to count the points
Luckey Li’s smart, silly, and stylish update to the foot bind
Gary Longoria’s double-or-nothing Broadway
Alex Gallimore tunnel to GT, with some stylish slack pops for flavor
Ethan Stromquist’s slow & stylish arm hold trick
Adam Schultz’s crazy counterslack
Daiju Okamura’s fun trapeze repeater
Tsukasa Takatsu’s “Glam Bucket” — don’t forget to watch his brilliant “Tricks 2013” compilation!
11/20/13 #trickcircle Roundup: In-Depth with Mark Mangarin & Yuji Kelly
The #trickcircle tag on Instagram is blowing up with yo-yo players sharing their tricks, and we here at @Yoyonews are picking out the best ones to share every week. This second installment also features our first batch of mini-interviews, in which Yuji sheds light on the thinking behind his combo and Mark questions just what the heck “flow” is supposed to mean anyways. More bangers from John Ando, Malcom Chiu, and more after the jump.
@johnando starts the week off with a huge bang, or rather two: back-to-back bangers in this video, and a second round of brilliant concepts in another. John Ando is perhaps most often remembered for his 2008 World-winning freestyle when he reminded everybody that a trick could be compelling with only a few string hits, and his opening wrap to trapeze proves this to be as true as ever. John is also a world-class 2A player, which surely informs his movement-oriented style and gives you an idea where the idea for a wrap like that comes from. The trick that follows is just as gnarly: while he can make a single string hit look good, he is in no way limited to simple tricks, and sequences like this rack up the points quick. This combo has a particularly satisfying punchline in the form of an elbow slack catch which sets up into a ripcord release, the impact of which is greatly increased by John’s performing it behind his shoulder. There are very few players who can space their tricks the way that John does, and I dearly hope we see more #trickcircle tricks from him soon.
@clywlevi (AKA Mark Mangarin of CLYW) was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about this instaclip, “Maclean.”
Yoyonews: What, if anything, was the genesis of this trick? Was there a theme you wanted to explore or did the moves just gel together?
Mark Mangarin: I was creating an extension to a combo that Adam Schultz was working on when I was hanging out with him and Andrew Maider in NYC — ideas from this were adapted into the first segment. The rest was made in conjunction, but it’s part of a much longer trick that doesn’t fit in the instagram time limit (:15 goes by so fast). Theres a debate about the concise definition of ‘flow’ going around right now, so I’m playing around with different approaches.
YYN: What is your personal definition of “flow”?
MM: Haha, oh shoot. Honestly, I don’t like to bother defining the concept. It’s like asking what the meaning of hipster or ratchet is…
I don’t think theres a specific definition. Going by what the community considers flow, then both JD and Sid have “really good flow” so it’s wrong to consider flow as the smoothness about specific physical motions. It has more to do with one’s timing/execution, but it can be uniquely good per person and what’s considered good flow can change over time very quickly, so I think of flow as a vague/undefined subset of someone’s execution style and trick construction.
YYN: What would you consider the centerpiece or main idea you’d like to communicate with this trick?
MM: Personally I think the execution, but the reverse quarterstack whip is a big takeaway too. It’s the easiest to explain compared to the rest of the trick, but a reverse quarterstack mount leaves you with many options because you can drop the loop using your elbow.
YYN: The drop before the reverse quarterstack (trapeze-brother elbow catch) seems somewhat different from your usual combo construction. What are the benefits and disadvantages of including a pause like that in a trick?
MM: I usually never drop strings/mounts randomly as it can make tricks look shallow. I’m just messing around with different things right now, as #trickcircle seems like a good outlet to share ideas including those not fully developed. I think it gives more attention to the whip, but maybe someone out there can make a full drop look good?
While the community may be a ways off from agreeing on a definition of “flow”, few would disagree that @andrewbergen has it in spades. His first entry into the #trickcircle canon, titled “jsmy”, opens with what appears to be a shockwave-inspired chopsticks combo that sets up a lovely falling slack whip before folding its way into a complex triangular string formation. Much of this trick’s strength comes from the sense of rhythm that it establishes early on with back & forth motions, and we at Yoyonews are all hoping that Andrew graces us with some more choice bits of tech soon.
UK National Champ and Yoyofactory star @yujirobert dipped a toe into the #trickcircle waters with this Yuuki-influenced tech tour de force. He also filled us in on the details behind it with a short interview:
Yoyonews: What, if anything, was the central idea behind this combo? What did you want to showcase or express most?
Yuji Shimokawa Kelly: The central element I wanted to showcase is the slack drop which happens just where i’ve selected the screen cap. I wanted to create an effect where i would drop the slack with my arms pointed to the right, and then dismount using the same movement to the left. This was the first time I’d actually filmed it, and I can see that it doesn’t work quite as well as I had hoped.
YYN: Looks good to us. Do you name your tricks?
YSK: I very rarely name my tricks, and this particular one I don’t think is name worthy just yet.
YYN: Would you say this trick is “finished”? How can you tell when a trick is complete?
In terms of the combo, far from it. I don’t think first and second half will ultimately be part of the same combo, I just wanted to fit them on one clip. Watching the clip back, I’m finding a couple of little things I can change to improve it.
YYN: We’ll be excited to see what this turns into, thanks for the look!
Taking a quick trip from England to Hong Kong, we have @jackey_li of team @c3yoyodesign showing us just how good slack can look in slow motion. Slomo really helps break down the subtleties of the trick here, and the fact that it’s only a few moves makes it very tempting to learn. Just because it’s short does not mean that it’s easy, and Jackey packs some serious depth into it: in addition to looking pretty, the opening rejection sets up a clever slack move that gets the strings in place for the following sequence of pops culminating in a triangle.
If you’re anything like us, you probably had to watch the latest tricks from @meowcolm (AKA Malcolm Chiu of Duncan Crew) a couple of times before they made any sort of sense at all. Fortunately, Malcolm’s supplemented the mobile video with an HD slomo clip of some other lassos so you can really gawk at that perfect loop before he hucks it into the gap… but you’re probably going to need some practice before you can get that cross-handed GT down. Apparently, the 720 lasso root trick is Jesse Christe‘s creation, and Malcolm is to be commended for both taking it to another level and properly citing his sources.
Want more insta-madness? Don’t forget to check out all the videos tagged with #trickcircle and submit some of your own for a chance to be featured next week… and, hey! Follow @yoyonews while you’re at it, yeah? Here are some of our other favorites of the week that we didn’t have time to write about.
- Tsukasa Takatsu’s Bottom-mount Shockwave
- Michael Ferdico’s Black Hops Knee Bounce
- Shane Lubecker’s around the head cross-armed combo
- Ryan Gee’s “Tin Foil Hats”/”Turnt Up”
- Daniel Ickler’s “Fash Rolls”
- Andy Jones’ Clockwork heart combo
- A puppy high five assist in Tressley’s “Mylets”
- and two-headed monster tricks with Drew & Melissa.
See you next week!
Instagram #trickcircle Roundup – 11/13/13
It didn’t take long after the launch of Instagram video for yo-yo players around the world to start sharing their tricks in ≤15-second bursts. The hashtag #trickcircle started popping up, and there have been over a hundred yoyo tricks posted under that label in the past three months. We here at @YoyoNews have been monitoring that tag closely, and are now endeavoring to bring you the choicest morsels of instagoodness every week with a #trickcircle roundup. Want your 15 seconds of fame? Study these well, and start shooting…
This trick from @yoyoingadam (AKA Adam Brewster of CLYW) is called “Kefka’s Tower”, intended to be part of his Final Fantasy series showcased in “Eleven” but left off until “The Only Thing Worth Saying”. Adam’s always had a gift for creating (& naming) new elements, and the central feature of this one is something he calls a Portal. In his words: “A brother to the folding gate concept: with a ‘portal’ the yoyo breaks plane as it’s pushed through a gap in the mount, instead of remaining stationary while the mount folds over it as with a gate trick.” Gates (folding the string formation over/under a yoyo) are a relatively underused triangle entrance, and the pushiness of the portal gives the concept new energy. A frontstyle combo was the natural choice for the best view of the off-plane movement, and Adam ties the rest of the moves together nicely.
@werrdtranton (AKA Eric Tranton of Werrd) brings us a short & sweet sequence blending some recent favorites. He opens with a regen popularized in Gentry Stein’s winning US Nats 2013 freestyle: a bind caught in the off-hand, which is then tossed up and regenerated into… well, for Gentry it was a split-bottom mount, but where Eric really ups the ante is landing in a four-point star. This one might be hard to learn without slomo, but the concept is definitely one worth exploring, and maybe if you study some Ryosuke Iwasawa videos you’ll come around to your own variation.
@raygstl (AKA Ray Godefroid, AKA Baby Bear Treezy) takes us into the future with a 3D 5A trick that reminds me of a cross between Red’s double pinwheel sequences and the Red Rocket spintop trick. The root concept of the trick—up/down off-plane 3D pinwheels—is more than cool enough on its own, but there are some subtleties and that imply a lot of room for growth. My personal favorite part of the trick actually lies at the very beginning, as Ray uses a smooth & subtle rejection to enter the trick, which builds the proper amount of momentum while simultaneously creating a tantalizing bit of slack just begging to be incorporated in a tech combo. Ray naturally ends the combo with a bucket, the traditional endpoint for tricks with horizontal dice movement.
Let’s take a quick trip across the Pacific for a monster of a trick from @sakatuca, AKA Tsukasa Takatsu of One Drop. He’s been making jaws drop this year with his dense, intricate chopsticks tricks, merging a Japanese sense of trick economy with the technical sensibilities of Mark Montgomery and Sid Seed. As you can see in this clip, though, Tsukasa is much more than just a fusion of his influences and has fresh ideas to spare: the opening mount alone should be enough to keep you busy for the week, a herculean magic drop/chopsticks/bucket conglomeration that looks borderline impossible on a fullsize yoyo. In addition to being mindnumbingly difficult, this mount sets up a sequence of visually stunning slacks that form the backbone of the trick. The strongest impression I took away from this trick is the way a well-placed slack manipulation can break up the pace of a combo and raise the impact of the other elements.
We’ll wrap this week up with a trick from YoyoNews favorite @david0ung, AKA David Ung of Yoyofactory. This combo is a takeoff of a lesser known Spencer Berry trick, Inhale, a sister trick to his masterwork Breath, first seen in Debt in Knowledge. Inhale works off of the idea of setting up a hanging potential GT knot halfway down the string, something played with by luminaries like Kohta, and then resolves the snag by swinging the yoyo through. David applies his own spin to the concept at every stage of the trick, from setting up the knot with a GT chopsticks slack to resolving with a risky triangle suicide. The best part of the trick, though, may be how much restraint is used: both David and Spencer let the elements speak for themselves, using subtle mounts that invite the viewer to really study what’s happening instead of getting caught up in flash or needless technical flourishes. Also, did we mention that this trick is hard? It’s so freakin’ hard.
Tune in next week, and don’t forget to follow @YoyoNews on Instagram and tag your insta-clips with #trickcircle for a chance to be featured!